


Four Times Clarke Saves Bellamy’s Life, and One Time He Saves Hers

by Helholden



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Aftermath of Violence, Banter, F/M, Friendship, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Stay here,” he says quietly. Bellamy steps forward. Clarke’s stubborn, so she follows him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Times Clarke Saves Bellamy’s Life, and One Time He Saves Hers

**Author's Note:**

> **Author’s Note:** I feel like I should apologize for this, but I won’t.

_i._

 

Clarke approaches the bridge, gun in hand. She surveys the spot. Looks at the ropes, the boards. It’s old and decrepit. The wood is clearly rotten. Her eyes soar upward, taking view of the mountain in the distance. The bridge spans a drop about five hundred feet or more. Clarke steps forward and looks down as Bellamy walks up to her side.

 

“You think it’s safe to pass?” he asks her.

 

Clarke bites the inside of her cheek. She isn’t sure. She doesn’t want to risk it either. Nothing seems safe about the bridge, but it’s a long way around and back into the forest if they expect to get to Mount Weather, and Clarke isn’t sure they can do it without getting caught by grounders. They’re already far off of their territory and into enemy lines.

 

She shakes her head. “No,” Clarke tells him. “I wouldn’t trust the wood. Or the ropes.”

 

Bellamy is a daredevil, though, and she looks at him as he’s throwing the strap of his gun over his shoulders and across his back. “I got this,” he says, stepping forward before she can stop him.

 

Clarke drops her gun and rushes forward because one life is more important than the loss her gun can incur. Even though Bellamy is slow into stepping on the bridge, the ropes are rotten, too, and they snap.

 

The terrifying echo is loud in Clarke’s ears, but she reaches forward and grabs Bellamy by the belt strap of his pants, yanks him back as the bridge breaks free from the cliff side and collapses into the drop.

 

Bellamy falls into her, knocking her off her feet. He crushes her beneath his back. It is unromantic, painful even. His elbow hits her side. Clarke’s head hits the hard-packed dirt, throbbing in the aftermath. His gun is between them, the metal stabbing into her chest and stomach.

 

Clarke slaps his shoulder, coughs. “Get off me, Bellamy—”

 

He rolls off, nearly twisting his ankle in the process as he pushes himself to stand quickly. He looks down at her, shock written all over his face. Bellamy looks out into the distance next, realizing that could have been him . . .

 

. . . if it weren’t for her.

 

He stumbles backwards as he stares out. Clarke pushes herself upright. He looks back at her.

 

“Are you okay?” he asks.

 

“Yeah,” Clarke says. “I’m fine.” She brushes the dirt off of her clothes with her face all screwed up.

 

“You know, Clarke,” Bellamy begins, and she pauses at the teasing tone of his voice, “if you wanted to get my pants off so badly, you could’ve just asked.”

 

Clarke blinks. She aims a deadpan look at Bellamy.

 

Of course, even in a life or death situation, Bellamy Blake doesn’t disappoint. Clarke Griffin doesn’t disappoint either. She gives him a cheery smile, and then she gives him the finger.

 

Bellamy laughs aloud at her reaction, and he walks over to her. He extends his hand to help her up.

 

She takes his hand with the same one that just flipped him off because she’s Clarke Griffin, and Bellamy may be an ass, but he is also her friend.

 

 

_ii._

 

They are out patrolling, and they are out patrolling with guns. Clarke can choose anyone she wants to patrol with, and she chooses Bellamy. Bellamy makes her laugh, and that must count for something, she thinks. She doesn’t smile enough. Sometimes it hurts to smile, like her muscles forgot how. But it’s worth the pain when she does.

 

He’s walking beside her, two steps behind. Sometimes Bellamy falls quiet, and Clarke looks back to make sure he’s still there. She can hear his boots crunching against the dead leaves, but still, she looks back.

 

Bellamy walks ahead of her suddenly. He holds out his arm in front of her. Clarke freezes as she bumps into it. She looks at him. He’s staring ahead.

 

“What is it?” Clarke whispers.

 

“ _Shh_ ,” Bellamy says, and he puts his hand on her arm. He pushes her back slightly, and then he moves to stand in front of her. Like he means to protect her. Clarke gets annoyed with it when he does that because she can take care of herself, but she doesn’t argue this time. She lets him lead.

 

Bellamy takes his gun into his hands. He raises the barrel. Looks through the scope. Without a light, Clarke knows he won’t see much.

 

“Stay here,” he says quietly. Bellamy steps forward.

 

Clarke’s stubborn, so she follows.

 

She’s glad for it, too, and so is Bellamy, when a grounder runs out of the brush with a knife in hand. They don’t have guns. The grounder is almost on Bellamy, coming from an angle that will blindside him. Clarke raises her gun. There’s no choice. Fire and kill the grounder, or watch the grounder kill Bellamy.

 

She aims quick. Fires a shot.

 

The grounder falls just as Bellamy is turning to face him. The guy collapses at Bellamy’s feet, and Bellamy stumbles backwards, aiming his gun at a dead body, but he doesn’t expend his bullets. He looks at Clarke the way he looked at her on the bridge. When he casts his gaze back on the dead body, he finally speaks.

 

“Well, I guess all those shooting lessons I gave you paid off, huh?” Bellamy says, his eyes still on the grounder.

 

“Yeah,” Clarke says, lifting up her gun. She breathes out. “Looks like.”

 

 

_iii._

 

Clarke doesn’t know how it happened, but Bellamy took a slash to the chest. They’re rushing him into the dropship to the corner they have dubbed the infirmary as Clarke runs beside them. They move his body off the makeshift stretcher and onto the table. She tears his shirt. He’s bleeding everywhere. The gash is deep, the blood dark.

 

She pops a bottle of Monty’s moonshine, gulps some, and washes his wound with the rest. Bellamy yells out in pain, thrashing like an animal. She holds the bottle to his mouth, gives him some.

 

“It’ll help with the pain,” she says soothingly, and Bellamy looks at her through hazy eyes. He drinks because she tells him to.

 

Clarke spends her evening sewing up his wound, and then she spends the early part of the night falling asleep in a chair beside his table. The metal slab he is laying on is hard, but she lays her head on it, anyway. Clarke falls asleep before she knows it.

 

As Clarke wakes up later, she swears she feels bugs in her hair. She yanks upright suddenly, touches her head with both hands, but there’s nothing in her hair.

 

She looks at Bellamy.

 

He’s awake.

 

Clarke shoots upright onto her feet, grinning like the sun is shining through her face.

 

“You’re alive,” she says in disbelief.

 

Bellamy raises his eyebrows. The movement is slow, weak. “No thanks to you,” he adds. “Again.”

 

“You lost a lot of blood,” Clarke tells him. “I didn’t know if you would even make it.”

 

“For you, princess?” Bellamy cracks at her, smirking softly. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

 

Clarke tilts her head at him. “Stop being smart,” she scolds. “Just be thankful for once, Bellamy, please?”

 

The smirk falls off his face. He looks oddly vulnerable, pale, and drained. “Thanks,” Bellamy murmurs beneath his breath. He stares at her for a moment, and then adds, “Third time’s a charm, right, Clarke? I couldn’t have died.”

 

“Maybe,” Clarke says. “And maybe next time you won’t be so lucky. Be careful, Bellamy.”

 

She squeezes his hand, turns away, and leaves.

 

He reaches out with his fingers, straining momentarily, until they fall still. He watches her go, and then he turns away, too.

 

 

_iv._

 

“What’s this?” Bellamy asks, reaching a large part of wreckage before the others. It’s leaking, and he reaches out for it to touch the liquid and smell it.

 

“Get away!” Raven hollers, and Clarke is closer to Bellamy. Her head whirls toward him, and she snatches his hand, pulling it back. “It’s explosive!” Raven yells next.

 

“ _Run_ ,” Clarke hisses at Bellamy with her eyes wide, and Bellamy takes one look at her and doesn’t need to be told twice. With her hand still grasping his wrist, Clarke starts running with Bellamy in tow. They run and run and run until an explosion tears through the air and sends a shockwave to knock them off of their feet.

 

Clarke lands face down in rocks, debris, ash, and soot. Bellamy is beside her, though, and they are both alive. She rolls over onto her back, looking up into the sky as fire soars higher and higher. Clarkes stares in wonder. That could’ve been them.

 

Clarke forgets about Bellamy until he grabs her arm, crawling towards her. She looks at him.

 

“Clarke, are you okay?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned. There’s no smartass remark this time. No jab about her saving his life. Again.

 

Shocked, she nods her head. “Yeah,” Clarke manages to say. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

 

Bellamy looks at her like a terrified child looking to his mother. It may just be in her head, but Clarke swears she sees something else in his eyes. It looks like he wants to hug her, but he just stares at her, his face marked with soot, breathing heavily through his mouth.

 

Clarke falls back and lets her head hit the ground as she breathes out.

 

She feels his hand clutch into the sleeve of her jacket too tight, but she doesn’t care.

 

Clarke barely even feels it, after all.

 

 

_v._

 

As the knives and bullets fly, Clarke loses all sound in her ears for one inexplicable moment as she looks around herself.

 

She’s trying to find her bearing, trying to get back in the game with the rest of them. She took a blow to the head that knocked her off her feet, but she drove a knife into the belly of the woman who did it. A grounder. An attacker. An enemy.

 

Clarke’s gun ran out of bullets, and so she had dropped it. It’s all blade now.

 

She turns to her next enemy, a grounder with a gun. Clarke looks shocked for one moment, freezing in place, not knowing what to do. Where did he get a gun from? _One of our own_ , she thinks. He’s killed someone else. One of her people.

 

One of her friends.

 

Clarke grits her teeth, raises her knife to charge, and as the pound of the gun firing fills the air around her, a dark blue and black blur jumps in front of her, bullet striking someone else. Clarke freezes again, her mouth falling open in terror. The body collapses at her feet, and another gun goes off, the grounder falling, too.

 

Clarke immediately drops to the side of her fallen comrade to see who was stupid enough to take a bullet for her.

 

She rolls him over onto his back, and it’s Bellamy. He gasps for air, and Clarke gasps, too, although it’s for a completely different reason. He grins up at her, though, blood on his lips.

 

“Hey, princess,” Bellamy says slowly. He lifts his hand, pointing a finger at her. “I had to pay you back somehow, huh?”

 

He’s blurry, and it takes a moment for Clarke to realize those are just tears in her eyes.

 

“Bellamy, no—” she chokes out.

 

“Don’t worry,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve cheated death enough, don’t you think? Best not to piss him off . . . too much. He’s been after me for a while . . . . Could never seem to get me . . . as long as I had you around . . . ”

 

“I can save you,” she whispers urgently, trying to pull him up. If she can get him to stand, if she could—

 

“No,” Bellamy says, trying to shake his head. He coughs, and blood comes up. He’s too heavy. She can’t lift him. Clarke is sobbing in earnest now, but Bellamy just reaches up, clutching jerkily onto her shoulder. His hand is losing feeling, though, because he can’t grasp with all his fingers. “This time,” he says in a strong voice for one so weak, looking up at her with a pointed expression as he grasps her shoulder harder, “I saved you.”

 

Clarke cries harder. “Bellamy, please—”

 

Despite her cries, though, and despite her pleas, despite her hands grasping onto him, trying to hoist him upright in the middle of the slick mud, Clarke realizes one very important thing in that moment.

 

Her hands can fix all the damage in the world that her words cannot.

 

 


End file.
